Click. And then silence.

It was the sound I dreaded in my calls to Cuba. As I gathered testimony from relatives of political prisoners, I never knew what an abrupt end to the call meant.

The death in custody on February 23, 2010, of Orlando Zapata Tamayo after an 85-day hunger strike serves as a tragic reminder of the ongoing repression in Cuba.

Migrants drowning at sea after being turned away from shore. Children detained with adults and at risk of physical and sexual abuse. Workers cheated out of wages and confined to their workplace. Authorities extorting bribes. Governments denying health care benefits to those who might most need it.

Many governments’ policies toward migrants worldwide expose them to human rights abuses including labor exploitation, inadequate access to health care, and prolonged detention in poor, overcrowded conditions.

Normalization of U.S. relations with Cuba was widely seen as exactly the kind of high-value, low-hanging fruit that would be ideal for a president elected under the banner of "change." But a scathing new Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, "New Castro, Same Cuba," will make lifting sanctions against the Castro regime-on travel, remittances, trade-more difficult for President Obama.

Human Rights Watch submits a statement to the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee for its hearing, “Is it Time to Lift the Ban on Travel to Cuba?” Human Rights Watch believes lifting the travel ban represents an essential step towards ending a US policy that has failed for decades to have any impact whatsoever on improving human rights in Cuba.

Raúl Castro's government has locked up scores of people for exercising their fundamental freedoms and allowed scores more political prisoners arrested during Fidel Castro's rule to languish in detention. Rather than dismantle Cuba's repressive machinery, Raúl Castro has kept it firmly in place and fully active.